Five years of supporting new European talent

On Thursday the 26th of September at Melkweg in Amsterdam, Liveurope's 15 venues gathered to kick start the celebrations for the platform's fifth year anniversary. With meetings, concerts and networking, we looked back on the years that helped shaped Europe's live music scene as we know it today.

What was once a bet turned into a very real success story

Launched in 2014 with the support of Creative Europe, Liveurope created a one-of-a-kind system to help live music venues take risks to promote the diversity of the European music scene.

"When all of our first 13 venues got together as part of our platform, it was the first time we took part in such a wide European collaboration," confirmed Geert van Itallie, director of Melkweg during the Liveurope festival in Amsterdam.

The platform originated from a simple yet challenging demand, "Our music venues were hungry to book emerging European acts from beyond their national borders. But for them, it sometimes represents too big of a risk to take, as they will be most likely loosing money," continued Elise Phamgia, the Liveurope project coordinator. Thanks to its progressive incentive mechanism, the venues of Liveurope can be rewarded for their efforts to present new European acts to their audiences. The objective of the platform is to distribute support in the form of financial bonuses to its members, according to the quantity and the diversity of young acts they book. 

A very simple idea was all that was needed to change the way Europe discovers music

Liveurope's idea was simple and practical from day one. It was clear that concert venues were hungry to book lesser-known artists from beyond their national borders. But this progressive mindset of bookers meant taking risks that can often be too daunting to follow-through with. Liveurope bridged this gap. By implementing a progressive bonus mechanism in which concert venues are financially rewarded for booking European, emerging, non-national artists, our member venues were free to take the risk necessary to bring an up-and-coming artist from abroad straight to their venue and introduce them to new audiences.

Since 2014, hundreds of thousands of concert lovers attended 2,300 Liveurope concerts by artists that represented 40 different nationalities.

The second edition of the Liveurope festival was the occasion to present the achievements of the platform since day 1. "We now know that each venue that joins our platform has the potential to increase by 63% the number of European up-and-coming acts they book over the course of a season". The platform has also boosted the diversity of its venues’ programs. "Before Liveurope was implemented, the line-ups of our venues represented 24 nationalities on average. Today's figure of 40 nationalities represented shows that just a simple intervention can make a significant contribution." Elise Phamgia underlined.

More generally, Liveurope has allowed for a more representative linguistic diversity, as well as a representation of different genres, letting music lovers from Copenhagen and Lisbon, to Dortmund and Prague discover the scenes from across the continent

Five years of our success mean that the future is bright for Europe's concert venues

Currently counting 15 members, Liveurope has the ambition to continue growing and to encourage the circulation of new European talent in even more venues. 

"We have a long waiting list of venues who would like to join our platform, including concert halls in cities and regions where the platform is not yet represented," stressed Jana Graso, the communications coordinator of Liveurope. Adding new venues in the platform would not only be a way to maximize the platform’s positive results, but also to expand a tight-knit network of European music venues professionals. "Liveurope has also sparked an unprecedented collaboration of music venue professionals from all corners of the continent. In our next five years, we want to continue showing that we can, in a very practical way, write the success story of Europe through live music." concluded Jana Graso.